An argument could be made that philosophy and the Arts have been dead for quite a while now, and that we are in a cultural dark age.

How can this stunt possibly be given a pro-Trump spin? — Relativist

He is waving thank you to loyal supporters.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry Adams — TheMadFool

For example,

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry Adams

and

Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him. — Cardinal Richilieu — TheMadFool

For example,

The man
who speaks,
doesn't know.
The man
who knows,
doesn't speak — Lao Tze

Words and meaning have either a tenuous or a forced hypothetical connection?

I don't think Pence would be much of an improvement — tim wood

Pence is also a stable genius but from another stable.

Two reasons:
2)I never call out...ever. and
1)I go into work every day, no matter what — Merkwurdichliebe

This is logical when you get paid by the day or have hard deadlines for your projects, for example if you're an accountant working for yourself.
You might as well be paid for being sick, and besides, taking a day off is so much more rewarding on a fine sunny day when you're feeling happy. :cool: :beer:

All these proposals ignore the elements of time, change, and the people involved. There were differences between emerging industrial and laggard medieval agrarian states. Distribution of wealth is always something to be looked at before making grand universal pronouncements.

The lines in the sand in the US have been drawn a while ago. — Benkei

If I were a democrat I would advise Harris to insistently point out that Trump is the devil incarnate.

That all said it would still be good if Trump choked to death on his own spittle. — StreetlightX

What exactly would the consequences be if that happened? Let's try to do the calculus.
1. Pence becomes Pres.
2. The Republicans nominate a younger more dynamic stand-in for the trumpees
3. Republicans sweep the elections

I hate to wish pain or death on anyone — Relativist

A long prison term would be more humane.

Biden needs to win over Trump
Biden might not be able to win over Trump — darthbarracuda

I don't think Biden people had such high expectations. It is quite enough that he out-lasted the personal pressure of lies and insults that melted Trump's republican rivals in 2016. If Biden is old, Trump looks about as old.

Trump has a bigger button

Besides, Trump is well insured against all contingencies.
@VPOTUS goes to church every Sunday.

Nothing to worry.
It's a hoax. Fake news.

In short, a philosopher trying to analyse truth is sawing the branch on which he sits. — Olivier5

An Analytic philosopher, like Tarski, Davidson, or JerseyFlight, trying to analyse truth within analytic philosopy is sawing the branch on which he sits. However, most other peritrope arguments are fallacious.

You're beating a dead horse. Analytic philosophy has been done for a while now. What remains are teaching jobs to train throngs of paying students for other activities, a mountain of superfluous books and articles, and interested fools like us.

Great posts ! Sounds like you're enjoying Plato as much as I do.

Plato is as deep as the ocean, and one can fish for insights at all depths. Translation of key terms and interpretation, the mindset of both the translator and the reader can turn our reading in a number of directions. I find that reading Plato is very different than arguing with and against him on each point. Neither is right or wrong, just different. What is clearly wrong is to read Plato as spouting a Socratic or Platonic dogma.

I agree with you that Plato is not and has not been understood, especially not by the brain of the Academy. Throughout the dialogues many of Plato's predecessors are both philosophically incorporated and unfairly excoriated. Aristotle followed this practice but now against his master.

By today, misrepresenting Plato has become a well-established habit. Even the superb Platonic analytic writings of the past 50 years have not had a measurable effect on the classroom or on the majority of philosophers. Plato is often seen as a misguided predecessor of Aristotle just waiting to be set right.

I think that the reason why psychic matters are not funded by universities is that many academics do not take such matters seriously. — Jack Cummins

Psychic research can be easily and inexpensively conducted even by middle schoolers. Funding is not the problem. Academics value their research time and don't want to waste it in unproductive areas. If there was even a glimmer of hope that psychic research would be publishable it would happen.

So what's wrong? Nothing.

The underlying issue is the weakness of statistics for small samples. Even when telepathy might seem obvious to a casual bystander, the statistics will prove insignificant and the research a waste of time.

There might be a difference between psychic telepathy and demonstrable scientific telepathy.

Ordinary language is a superposition upon a vague cultural complex of words and rules that are codified as formal language. In order to speak, we must infer subjective agency and context to any utterance before we can adequately effectively communicate with another person. With and especially without language a degree of irrational empathy is required.

This empathy is noticeably different from person to person and is sometimes labeled as or attributed to EQ, Emotional Quotient . I assume some loose scientific studies exist that gave this phenomenon its name.

Telepathy is different. Reading minds without cultural, circumstantial, or verbal clues ought to be more difficult to do and harder to assess scientifically from a researcher's perspective.

Analytic philosophy, I think, hasn't really been a thing for some time now. — Srap Tasmaner

This insight is right on target. It is not the case that analytic philosophy is vacuous or useless or fruitless. Rather, the charge should be that it is finished as it is constructed. It is done. The real questions are What is next? Which way should 21st century philosophy turn?

America, I weep for you.

If there are objects and there is space then isn't space just a complementary object that we know less about? Isn't it just a matter of assigning some attributes to make space complete?

In what way is dark matter an object?

Plotinus, ... his philosophy was focused on a group of people who would understand what Plotinus was trying to explain - his students -. — Gus Lamarch

An excellent point. This is also the most effective way to interpret professor Plato. Something like the Theaetetus was written to fly over the heads of casual or unsympathetic readers.

Plotinus uses "the One" and "the Good" interchangeably. — Gus Lamarch

This is one reason why people have trouble understanding Plotinus. Metaphysical concepts which have contrary incompatible underlying assumptions cannot be used interchangeably without introducing equivocation and logical incoherence.

Plato mostly got these right whereas Platonists uniformly get them wrong. It is amazing how a fundamentally simple closed static One can be confused with an open transcendent interactive Good, or how either can be thought of as an active creative Agent.

Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." — Plotinus

Isn't there a difference between the Good and the One?

Usually the One is associated with Parmenides and the Good with Plato with the metaphysical distinction that the One is bounded whereas the Good is indeterminate. The Good is generative of all other Forms in an unspecified or yet to be specified manner. This way the One was complete but the Good remained a metaphysical puzzler.

Biden only says that the health care system, as well as the rights of marginalized groups are at stake and that should he win he will nominate a black woman. This seems like a very proper stance for his political climate.

A deeper concern can be raised that following the November election the losing side will ask the Supreme Court to strike down the legality of the voting process for key states. Trump has already signaled this intent in challenging mail-in voting. It is for this reason that Trump and McConnell have already expressed their desire to force an early appointment of a Trump ally to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court nominees used to need 60 votes in the Senate to be approved. In 2017, McConnell pushed through a vote to change the rules, so that nominees now only need a simple majority of 51 votes. In fact, 50 votes are enough for confirmation since Vice-President Mike Pence can cast the tie-breaking vote.

The two philosophers had different agendas. Plato wasn't the one who argued his way to the hemlock.

Plato says that philosophy is a preparation for death — bccampello

Did Plato say that or was it the character Socrates in a dramatic dialogue.
Shakespeare says "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" or was it said by the title character in a play?

[@Moderator, please remove this, thank you.]

Any serious metaphysics would start from the physics of today. — apokrisis

:up: very much
At the least, a 21st Century metaphysics should not be in ignorance or violation of recent science.

What is reality? Everything that exists, that has a being. Everything that can be grasped by reason and somehow perceived. — Eremit

What is reality? Reality is the totality of everything that surrounds me, everything that has the capacity to be sensed or to be thought about by me, everything that I can change by my thoughts or actions.

That’s because the photon doesn’t go through A1 OR A2, it goes through A1 AND A2. — Pfhorrest

Or perhaps in the sense that the photon goes through neither A1 nor A2 because there is never any particle photon at any instant. A wave version follows all paths but can only be realized as a photon particle hit in one of the patterns seen on the detector?

Guess we're in for another round of mismanagement and downplaying. — fdrake

To see the future, compare the GB chart to France which is perhaps a month ahead in development.

covid [...] there are hints that it may do permanent damage to the lungs and other organs in significant numbers of survivors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53356593 — unenlightened

Most early deaths of the elderly were probably due to COVID followed by a secondary bacterial infection which drew strong immune response from the patients' system which killed damaged and too many undamaged lung cells. Younger, much more active people have greater lung capacity to work with, helping to outlast the infection.

In general what is the value behind saying that something was proved? — TiredThinker

Proof can be positive or negative. In science, as @aporiap already said above, no positive proof is possible but it can be proven that something is logically false or shown that something does not work.

The statistics for COVID coming from various countries are not directly comparable because collection and reporting of data depend on the cooperation of the population, the facilities, and the politicians.

However, charts coming from Western Europe a coarser indicator of mostly reliable data suggest that COVID is here to stay for generations, just as many other viruses that regularly afflict mankind.

One can hope that some protective measures can be discovered but that has not worked for other corona viruses like SARS. Then again, we've never had a president before who could will prevention and cure to any disease just prior to election.

Minimally, the potential of evolving time space and some initial laws of physics had to be possible, even if only with an infinitesimal probability. Nothing else can be said.

In all ways, I am always absolutely here now.

These are just word games — Banno

That's philosophy in a nutshell

We have heard the philosophy that everything flows [eg, Heraclitus]. But, when 'this' becomes 'that,' it traverses something in between, such as when the color yellow becomes red it traverses orange — SaugB

Everything flows sounds like a metaphor for denying stasis in a dynamic world. All is change would probably be a more useful modern catch phrase. Change encompasses movement and avoids being tied to a continuous model of the world.

In what you say, the colors are fixed point objects with names. There is really no logical way to go from yellow to orange to red. If you go with physical wavelengths instead, then you can move up and down well beyond what can be seen and the color labels become obviously arbitrary.